” “"It is what you have tried to do yourselves over these years, as individuals and as a diocesan community stated Benedict XVI . In particular, you have recently committed yourselves to the Diocesan Synod, focussed on the parish: in it, you have gone back to the source of the council to draw from it that extra light and warmth that turns out to be essential to bring the parish back to being a lively and dynamic part of the diocesan community". Actually, "it is in the parish that one learns to effectively live one’s faith. This keeps the rich tradition of the past alive and revives its values in a secularised social environment, that often sounds hostile or indifferent". Quoting John XXIII’s words from the encyclical Pacem in terris, the believer "must be a sparkle of light, a centre of love, a reviving ferment within the mass", Benedict XVI noticed: "That was the lifetime programme of the great Pontiff, and this can become the ideal of every believer and every Christian community that knows how to draw, in the Eucharistic celebration, from the spring of the free, faithful and merciful love of the Resurrected Crucified One". He also mentioned the family, "the focal subject of ecclesial life, the bosom of the education to life, and the irreplaceable cell of social life". (continued)” ” ” “
